Things I Figured Out

At the risk of
sounding like an idiot, I've decided to post some little things I figured
out over the years. These little discoveries stand out in my mind because
I wasn't ever taught them, I just figured them out.

Just get the ingredients together. It isn't
like dissolving sugar into iced coffee. Dough is almost never better when
it has the bejezus mixed out of it. Mixing dough is kind of fun,
cathartic, so sometimes a baker will mix dough for an exceptionally long
time.

Meat is Muscle.

Every animal has "meat" on them.
It is the muscle on their bodies, either on the legs, the breast, the
back...anywhere. Strong, lean muscles are most appealing to the eye, but
weak, fat muscles are more appealing to the tooth. In fact, someone
just pointed out to me on Friday that seedstock cattle are judged (and
priced) by the percentage
intramuscular fat (IMF) their offspring produce.

School districts get money for each kid in
class per day.

School districts get twice as much money
for a kid that attends school 180 days than for one that only attends 90
days. The figure varies widely, but in California public schools, the
price is about $40 a day. If you are a student who is considering skipping
a day of class, be sure to contact your school administrator and see what
kind of incentive he can offer to guarantee your attendance.

When drawing a cartoon, write the words
first, then draw a speech balloon around them.

Yeah. Don't draw the balloon first.

Drawing the speech balloon first is like
buying a hat without trying it on for size.

Police don't enjoy giving out traffic tickets.

Police officers don't enjoy going around,
pulling people over, and ruining their days with $200 citations. Just like
most everyone else, they want people to like them, and would much rather be
chasing car thieves and rapists than hassling hardworking family-mobiles.

But, they have to give out some tickets,
so most probably tend to cite the cars that get on their nerves or earn
their attention.

Liquid
condensing on a cold Coke is from the air.

A cold soda doesn't need a leak to to leave
a ring of water on the coffee table. There is invisible gaseous moisture in
the air. If you have an ice-cold Coke, the moisture in the air cools down,
and turns to liquid water on the side of your can.

Movie
theatres get little of the money from movie ticket sales.

People visit theaters to see movies, and a
lot of price of the ticket goes directly back to the moviemakers. Less
than 10% of the ticket price goes to the theater itself. If theatres
weren't selling Coke for $5 a cup, they'd be in trouble.

Not that you should feel sorry for them.

Lungs aren't bags.

Lungs are where oxygen is introduced into
your bloodstream. They hold air, but they aren't just empty pink sacks.

Lungs are packed full of a complex system
of tunnels and pockets, so that every wisp of air is tantalizingly close
to blood-engorged capillaries. This plaza of exchange isn't a big, open
stadium, it is a tight system of itty bitty tunnels that lead to 600
million tiny rooms. If you cut open a lung, it isn't empty inside like a
potato-chip sack, it is full of membranes, like a sponge.

Cut past the intersection with an xacto.

When cutting a square out of some heavy paper
with an Xacto knife, I used to make cuts that met one another perfectly. Due to
the thickness of the material, and the angle of the blade, the cuts would not
meet one another on the underside. This resulted in a little tearing at the
edges. I eventually figured out that it is better to cut a bit past the
intersection. There will be little over-cuts on the material surface, but you'll
get clean edges on the square.

The same goes for cutting sheets of plywood with
a circular saw, and the thicker the material, the more over-cut that is
necessary.

Candles burn the wax.

Candles have two pieces; wax and a wick.
Although the fire is on the wick, and the wick does burn, it is the
burning wax that powers the candle.

Burning candles are a tidy little system.
The wick burns, which melts a little pool of liquid wax. This wax climbs
up the wick, a process called capillary action, where it vaporizes and
meets with enough oxygen to burn easily.